Hello there, people. I like to write a mixture of speculative fiction with contemporary/past US West elements, something called NeoWestern (want to know what I mean by NeoWestern? Check out this link: https://lithub.com/new-mythologies-of-the-frontier-a-neo-western-reading-list).
My latest trilogy, The Cost of Power, mashes up science fiction/science fantasy themes such as mind control technology, nanobots, digital thought clones, and multiverses with the Fae, magical artifacts, and complicated noble family histories. Add a near-future Northeastern Oregon setting. Mix in a strong-minded couple that face one heck of a lot of personal challenges along with tech problems, supernatural foes, and lots of Family and business scheming to create a tale I hope you won’t forget.
The Cost of Power is the culmination of my desire to write a big, sprawling, Pacific Northwest-based science fantasy saga that is based in the dry side of the state, not the wet side. I choose to write speculative fiction in Pacific Northwest settings or Pacific Northwest-based settings because it’s my home and I deeply love the many facets of where I live. This love and respect includes not just the land but the history of this place, both good and bad. My mixture of speculative fiction and Pacific Northwest history, backgrounds, and people is an attempt to bring together two things I like to read. I haven’t quite gotten to inserting aliens into Western tropes…um. Wait. Yes I have (that’s my novella Alien Savvy, due for recovering and reissuing sometime soon). In any case, like my Goddess’s Honor series and Netwalk Sequence series, The Cost of Power is in part about the land I love, based on—well—living here.
I really didn’t discover science fiction until I was in junior high, when a friend talked me into reading Andre Norton. I stumbled across Zenna Henderson and the People in Isaac Asimov’s Tomorrow’s Children anthology and was immediately hooked—after Henderson, it was James Schmitz and the Telzey Amberdon stories, Cordwainer Smith’s Instrumentality stories, then Anne McCaffrey and her psi stories…and it went on from there.
One of the other story themes I’ve had a fascination for over the years has been the large, intertwining, multigenerational family feuds, combined with family businesses. We see this not only in my Martiniere Family Saga books but in the Netwalk Sequence where the feud continues even when the family matriarch has died. But the Martiniere Family is my first real attempt at creating one of these big, powerful families and it’s been…an interesting exercise in worldbuilding. It’s actually been a rather nice lesson that I can carry over to epic fantasy.
In any case, writing for me has always been about creating the worlds that I would like to see and sharing them with other people. My first sustained work was a handwritten trilogy when I was a kid, about a girl and her palomino Thoroughbred mare who, of course, won the Triple Crown. The Black Stallion, only girl version. I poked around at various stories for years, then started submitting work seriously in the ‘80s. The zine scene erupted in Portland during the ‘90s, so I ended up publishing reviews, editorial columns, and essays in assorted zines around PDX for a few years. My last work in that vein included a series column in the Portland State Vanguard while attending graduate school to get my special education teaching certificate, and assorted informational special education blog posts.
Besides writing, I’ve been a complex securities litigation paralegal, bookkeeper, administrative assistant, personal assistant, and special education teacher/caseworker. For a while I did the Portlandia ‘90s thing of making and selling beaded jewelry when that was a thing. I also spent eighteen years as a rider and owner in a lesson barn where I learned a lot about starting young horses and retraining horses with minor problems. Add in having been a swim team parent, a high school band parent, a 4H leader and member, a lot of other stuff over the years, and I have a rich background mix to bring into my stories.
I hope you find what you like somewhere in my work.
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Title: The Cost of Power: Return
Author: Joyce Reynolds-Ward
Genre: Science Fantasy NeoWestern
Book Blurb:
TOUGH SITUATIONS DEMAND TOUGH CHOICES.
Despite being a high-level heir and potentially the next leader of the Martiniere Family and the Martiniere Group, Gabriel Martiniere testified against the Group’s abusive use of mind control technology on military indentureds. But his testimony was compromised, and he risked being killed if he didn’t go into hiding.
Then his idyllic exile on an isolated Northeastern Oregon ranch is endangered by a true crime show that will reveal his real identity and pose a threat to those he has grown to love. Plus the Family wants Gabe back. Not only has the Group’s mind control tech been stolen by Gabe’s cousin Joey and sold to their biggest competitor, but the Family is under threat from intangible tech constructs, digital thought clones that cross universes, as well as supernatural elements tied to the Family’s fabled descent from a European water spirit, the Melusine. He can’t just walk away from his beloved Ruby and her grandfather. But if he doesn’t leave—how much danger does he put them in?
Gabe’s love Ruby Barkley is an agtech wiz determined to develop her vision of field nanobiobots that gather data and improve plant survival in heat and drought conditions. She knows her way around nanobots, not just agriculture-focused but in other uses. What will happen when she learns who Gabe really is—and will the aristocratic Family accept her? Or will they reject her as a hick hayseed rodeo queen?
Big decisions lie ahead of Ruby and Gabe. The fate of the multiverse rests on the choices they make. They will potentially gain a lot of power.
But even the right decisions demand a price…eventually.
Excerpt:
Gabe thought he saw a fur trapper’s rough form standing near the trough, resembling a sketch of his ancestor Etienne Martiniere, who had been a fur trapper in the Northwest.
The ghostly Etienne form pointed at Gabe, then at the dirt. Despite himself, Gabe looked. Something glittered underneath the water trough’s outflow.
Perhaps it was a nice piece of fool’s gold he could add to Ruby’s collection.
“Pick it up,” the trapper said before disappearing.
Gabe investigated. It glittered gold, but was smooth and rounded, without the squarish shape of a pyrite crystal. A piece of lost jewelry. Possibly something that had belonged to one of Ruby’s Ryder ancestors. Gabe dug around in the damp soil, finally freeing the item—a gold ring, sized for a man’s hand. Flat-topped, covered with enough muck that he couldn’t tell if it was a signet ring or if it had once held a fairly large stone.
He rinsed the ring under the outflow, rubbing the dirt off of the flat top. No prongs or edging to indicate it had once held a stone, so a signet. Gabe’s pulse pounded harder. Signets weren’t common in Eastern Oregon. Coupled with that vision of Etienne—and this date—the Family mysticism at work?
He turned the ring over, and gulped.
A crest featured the rough outline of a rampant dragon facing a rearing stallion with fleur-de-lis on both sides, with initials underneath.
What is it doing here, of all places?
It was what he thought.
Buy Links (including Goodreads and BookBub):
Books2Read: https://books2read.com/u/4EaEPe
Author Biography:
Joyce Reynolds-Ward’s work includes themes of high-stakes family and political conflict, digital sentience, personal agency and control, realistic strong women, and (whenever possible) horses, frequently in Pacific Northwest settings.
She is the author of five speculative fiction series: The Netwalk Sequence, Goddess's Honor, The Martiniere Legacy, The People of the Martiniere Legacy, and The Martiniere Multiverse as well as standalones Federation Cowboy, Beating the Apocalypse, Klone's Stronghold and Alien Savvy. Her new trilogy, The Cost of Power, will be released in September, 2024.
Joyce is a Self-Published Fantasy Blog-Off Semifinalist, a Writers of the Future SemiFinalist, and an Anthology Builder Finalist. She is a board member of the Northwest Independent Writers Association, a member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association, and a member of Soroptimists International.
Social Media Links:
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CounterSocial: @joycereynoldsward
Bluesky: @joycereynoldsward.bsky.social
Title: Life in the Shadows
Author: Joyce Reynolds-Ward
Genre: Cyberpunk NeoWestern
Book Blurb:
IN A TECH-DRIVEN BIOREMEDIATION FUTURE, HARD CHOICES MUST BE MADE.
Powerful mother.
Powerful daughter.
Sarah Stephens and her daughter Diana Landreth run bioremediation companies dependent upon neural nets and nanotechnology to operate complex biobots. Sometimes competitors, sometimes collaborators, while they disagree, they are still mother and daughter.
And then the Disruption Machine begins its campaign of devastation.
In the process of their collaboration to stop the Disruption Machine, the shadows in their lives force their paths into a dangerous divergence.
Sarah chooses politics and power.
Diana chooses research and family.What happens when their choices collide?
Excerpt:
When her father and stepmother said there were problems with the land, Diana hadn’t thought it would be this bad. When they rode through the small stringers of Ponderosa pine that crossed over the top of the ridge, she could almost pretend that nothing had happened. What she saw on brief visits around the house didn’t suggest there was a major problem.
Until they rode into the open meadows between the stringers of trees. Diana should see dead, dry grasses with the faint fuzziness of early spring green growth around the roots.
Instead, nothing but stark, muddy ground mixed with frost-heaved ice crystals met her eyes. Barren clumps of sod marking where bunchgrass had once grown. No birds in the trees. No tracks on the ground.
But soil quality wasn’t the only problem that brought Diana to the ranch. She had received an urgent message from her stepmother Jan a week ago.
Your father really wants to see you. His health has taken a turn for the worse, and I’m not sure he can handle a trip to Portland. He doesn’t talk about how he feels but I can see it. Besides, you need to see the ranch. It’s gone to pieces and we can’t explain why. If you can get away….
Gone to pieces didn’t begin to describe what Diana saw around her. And as for her father’s health, he still wasn’t talking.
Buy Links (including Goodreads and BookBub):
Barnes and Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/life-in-the-shadows-joyce-reynolds-ward/1141220567
Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1220181
Bookshop: https://bookshop.org/p/books/life-in-the-shadows-author-preferred-2022-joyce-reynolds-ward/19773188
Title: Fabulist and Fantastical Worlds
Author: Joyce Reynolds-Ward
Genre: Fantasy short story collection
Book Blurb:
FIND YOUR ESCAPE IN THE FABULIST AND FANTASTICAL WORLDS OF JOYCE REYNOLDS-WARD….Worlds where….
a ski bum on vacation meets a different type of ski instructor
the stars turn right for a former revolutionary
a teacher learns the truth about odd events happening in her rural community
Ghosts haunt a high-level reining horse competition
aliens incorporate precognitive greeting cards as part of their invasion force
not all writer’s block comes from inside the writer
and more!
Stories of whimsy, joy and sorrow, victories and losses, and life-changing transformations, all in one volume!
Excerpt:
“Jesus taught me how to ski,” the kid in the bright orange ski pants said to the middle-aged lady next to me on the chairlift.
She barked a sharp but friendly laugh. “You mean Haysus, don’t you? Didn’t know they had a Latino ski instructor up here.” She waved a hand toward the day lodge, the bright lights for night skiing casting shadows on the run below us.
“No BS,” the kid insisted, pushing his goggles up onto his camouflage ski helmet. “Jesus. No Latino guy, the real thing. As in Jesus the Christ, the Son of God.”
“Come on,” the lady bantered. “You can’t convince me of that chunk of blarney, Thomas.”
“No, really, Mrs. K. Jesus’s a ski instructor up here. How else did I learn to ski so well in two seasons?” Thomas scratched the scraggly soul patch on his chin.
“You’re a natural athlete, kiddo,” Mrs. K said, shaking her head. “Even if you are full of BS.”
“For real, Mrs. K!”
“Tell me another one, Thomas. I might just believe that.”
Buy Links (including Goodreads and BookBub):
Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1422077
Barnes and Noble https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/fabulist-and-fantastical-worlds-joyce-reynolds-ward/1143767144
Title: Becoming Solo
Author: Joyce Reynolds-Ward
Genre: Urban fantasy
Book Blurb:
WHAT WILL A WITCH DO TO SAVE THE MAGIC FAIR THAT PROTECTS HER POWERS?
Yesenia Cruz is ambitious.
She wants to become a Solo witch, one who doesn’t need to renounce her powers at age twenty-one unless she becomes part of a protective family spell matrix. She has plans with her best friend, Kirsten Rogers, to open a boutique selling magic-spelled goods to the non-magical.
But. In order to become Solo, Yesenia needs to win the Bright Star Magic Fair crown for a third year. She can’t afford the academy that will qualify her to become Solo.
Her family wants her to give up her dreams of becoming Solo, marry Saul Ramos and become part of the Cruz family spell matrix.
And a strange new witch, Shadow the Question, from a Lost Fair, is a potential challenger—even as Yesenia and Kirsten become aware of a new threat to Bright Star Fair. They have to draw on Shadow’s knowledge to save Bright Star—but is Shadow’s knowledge sufficient? Can these three witches save the Fair?
For if Bright Star fails—then all magic fails. Eventually.
Excerpt:
Kirsten jerked her head at something behind Yesenia. “See who Rosalee’s talking to. Just look.”
Yesenia turned her head. She gasped and fumbled her end of the panel. It slipped from her fingers and fell to the ground, but she paid no attention.
Rosalee Hinds, the Style Revue and sewing spell competition superintendent for the Bright Star Magic Fair, was talking to a lanky stranger.
A stranger.
In the Style Revue setup tent, where Rosalee was the only non-magical Typical person allowed to be present. Definitely no outside witches were permitted inside the Fair during setup, so what was going on?
The Bright Star Fair daemon under Yesenia’s custody stirred irritably as Yesenia felt the hot, pulsating, iron of the other’s alien magic. It strained against the confines placed on it by Yesenia’s personal daemon. It had willingly submitted to those restraints when Yesenia had won the Fair Crown last year, giving her the right to be the Tapestry Singer this year.
However, now it was just so close to the new Tapestry’s birth. That made the Fair daemon, normally compliant the rest of the year, irritable and reactive to any sort of outside magic.
Buy Links (including Goodreads and BookBub):
Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1219111
Title: Beyond Honor and Other Stories
Author: Joyce Reynolds-Ward
Genre: Epic Fantasy
Book Blurb:
WHAT CHOICES LIE AHEAD WHEN ONE HAS SUFFERED BEYOND HONOR?
Aireii sorceress Alicira, last magician of the house of Miteal, has escaped the clutches of Zauril, murderer of most of her family and usurper of the Leadership of Medvara. She struggles to remain free of his control, especially since her unborn daughter, Zauril’s child, may have inherited his magic instead of hers.
Will she be able to find a safe refuge to rear her child free from Zauril’s influence and wreak her vengeance on him, or will the Gods interfere? Her only surviving sibling swears such a place is in Keldara. But will she be able to reach Keldara without losing all she holds dear?Furthermore, what will this safety cost her?
Excerpt:
“It’s time to move on, my lady.” Orlanden’s voice was firm but apologetic as he shook Alicira awake. She jerked into sharp awareness of her surroundings, pulse pounding hard in her ears from her nightmare.
Did I really wrench my magic free from Zauril’s control?
She lay on her back and stared at the wide gray sky above her, momentarily disoriented by the treeless surroundings so different from the damp forests of her former Medvaran home.
This definitely wasn’t Medvara. Orlanden’s fur-lined cloak cushioned her against the chilly dirt and bunchgrass. Sagebrush loomed over her, its faint acrid fragrance strangely soothing as it framed the thick white clouds skittering across the restless backdrop of higher gray clouds.
Storm coming. Worry clenched her gut. Natural or magical?
Without thinking, Alicira reached for her connection with the land, the enhanced natural senses that would answer her concern about the oncoming storm’s origin. Then she flinched away from contact with the raw wound in her magical senses. Even though she knew the land’s magic was gone from her, reaching for it was still a reflex.
Buy Links (including Goodreads and BookBub):
Smashwords : https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1219884